UNC Student Startup Fakes School Shooting to Advertise

I'm no marketing wizard, but if you try to trick your classmates into believing there is a violent criminal act occurring on campus, the stunt might just blow up in your face. The crew at Bevii is learning this the very hard way.

“Bevii is all app based – your mobile phone recreates your offline social life, online. Users want stuff to be happening in the background on their behalf without having to interact with a user interface. A social network isn’t a replacement for your social life. It is there to enhance it.”

Sounds great! The latest "social life enhancement" came in the form of the above email bulletin, which copied the format of UNC's university-sanctioned alert system, using the name alertcarolina.com. You see, the "victim" in this pretend "shooting" is supposed to be "Facebook," and Bevii is the murderer? I don't know—but again, I'm not a campus entrepreneur like Bevii founder Taylor Robinette. Predictably (you'd think!), students weren't really into this email:

If you go to http://t.co/6iPVz4JOJX the terrorists win. Hopefully just tweeting the link is not as destructive to the nation.

A Tar Heel tipster tells us this is indicative of a larger "barftastic #entrepreneur #innovation culture" at the school. "We're like diet San Francisco. Purely in our own heads." This has worked very well for Stanford, so keep an eye out for a Bevii IPO.